An Account of the Relationship between Psychological Capacities and Neurobiological Activities

This paper addresses the relationship between psychological capacities, as they are understood within cognitive psychology, and neurobiological activities. First, Lycan’s (1987) account of this relationship is examined and certain problems with his account are explained. According to Lycan, psychological capacities occupy a higher level than neurobiological activities in a hierarchy of levels of nature, and psychological entities can be decomposed into neurobiological ones. In the second half of this paper, an alternative account is laid out. This new account uses levels of organization and levels of explanation to create a two-dimensional model. Psychological capacities occupy a high level of explanation relative to the cellular and molecular levels of organization. Consequently, according to this model, psychological capacities are a particular way of describing the activities that occur at the cellular and molecular levels of organization.